Monday, September 22, 2008

Why Geico has lost my trust

I'm pretty mad. Actually, I'm beyond mad! I am about to lose all control and it has nothing to do with Sans-a-Blink Sarah or the McCain campaign at all.

Over the past three weeks the readership of this blog has grown exponentially. I am grateful for that and hope you all keep coming back. But I have to address a personal issue so if that's not what you want to read, come back later. However, I hope there is someone out there that can help.

I have carried Geico car insurance since I got my car two years ago. The policy was in my husband's name originally when he primarily used the car and then in my name when I started using the car primarily.

Now, I won't get into the details of a fender-bender I had over a year ago in a parking garage. Let's just say I was not happy with the way Geico handled the situation. Though the incident left a bad taste in my mouth I decided, against my better instincts, to renew the policy (changing it to my name) last April.

Now here is where I am about to lose my mind. I was on a five payment plan which meant that the month of September would not have a payment. I budgeted accordingly. My policy expires October 29th.

Well, the other day I received my renewal package for 10/29/08-04/29/09. The policy stated that I was now on a six payment plan and my first payment was due on Sept. 29, which is a week from today!

Of course I did not budget for this. So I called Geico to see what was up. The gentleman I spoke to was very kind (which is kind of unusual because I have been treated like a two year old child in the past when talking to Geico customer service representatives), but the answer he gave me as to why I now am paying in September did not suffice.

In fact it kind of reminded my of what I said in this post about just throwing out a bunch of words in order to get the questioner to forget the question. I got off the phone and realized that I now would have to come up with the money for insurance, on top of everything else, within a week's time.

The Geico guy did say I had a grace period of about a month so if I needed that time, I should use it. But that does not help me at all since I will still owe in October as well. September is still money I did not budget for and therefore the money is not there, and won't be there no matter how much supposed "grace" they give me.

Insurance in the NYC metro area is outrageously expensive. I suppose I could switch to AIG since I technically will own them soon (so will you, I might add!)

I know times are tough for a great many people right now. They are for my family as well. My computer broke and I am using my gracious husband's laptop for my computer needs, my cell phone broke and I had to pay full price for a new one from T-mobile even though we have been customers with them for over six years, my husband is ill and we are swamped with medical bills and I feel like we may have finally come to the tipping point.

There is no extra money and Geico pulling a fast one on me does not help. I'm mad as hell and I feel like screaming out the wondow "I'm not going to take it anymore".

The problem is my echo would scream back "Yeah you are. You don't have a choice!" and then laugh.

No comments:

Site Meter